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Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

Up to the 2008 election the Republican party platform called for reducing fossil fuel use, establishing a Climate Prize for scientists who solve the challenges of climate change, a long term tax credit for renewable energy (with specific mentions of solar and wind), more recycling, and making consumer products more energy efficient.

They wanted to aggressively support technological advances to reduce the dependence of transportation on petroleum, giving examples of making cars more efficient (they mention doubling gas mileage) and developing more flex-fuel and electric vehicles. They talked about honoraria of many millions of dollars for technological developments that could eliminate the need for gas powered cars.

They also mentioned promoting wireless communication to increase telecommuting options and reduce business travel.

All that was gone by 2012. I'm not sure what caused the change.

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Fracking. Before fracking people were worried about "peak oil", and being dependent on unfriendly governments for our basic energy needs. Then with fracking we realized we are actually sitting on huge available oil reserves, and peak oil quickly became a quaint outdated concept.

Not that it changes your point, but the other day I met a republican who said he doesn’t think climate change is a thing but peak oil, now that’s something to worry about.

The longevity of this plus the “no anthropogenic climate change” nonsense is astounding. Armchair climate sceptics are happy to seriously stick to talking points that are so out of date that even the oil industry doesn’t use them anymore.

So you met a person, they told you their Party Affiliation, then went to tell you how it isn't "real".

Sorry I don't believe your paraphrasing of this person's real thoughts and ideas. I'm sure these people exist, but it doesn't mean anything. I could equally go find someone crazy saying the world is going to end this year.

> I'm sure these people exist, but it doesn't mean anything.

One of those people is the current President of the United States.

Along with most of the people who voted for him.

>I could equally go find someone crazy saying the world is going to end this year.

Given current events, one doesn't have to be crazy to believe this

That may be part of it, but as your parent comment mentioned, the Republicans weren't only worried about peak oil and being dependent on unfriendly governments, but also about climate change. Of course, none of these three problems went away, the point where fossil fuels will be exhausted just got pushed further into the future, and the fact that it will take more and more effort and environmental damage to get to the remaining resources is also undeniable.

But yeah, I guess your answer still applies indirectly: Fracking -> stronger interests by US oil companies -> money to the Republican party -> fossil fuel friendly regulations.

Speaking to the grandparent comment, fracking is precisely what earned US "energy independence" for the first time ever, in 2011.

> earned US "energy independence"

In a very myopic way.

With the benefit of hindsight, yes. A lot of money was lost in the fracking boom after the price of oil crashed

Fracking has nothing to do with energy. When you look at EROI oil from a gusher is around ~100:1. For solar 10-25:1, wind 20-50:1, Fracking is 10:1 and most of that doesn't end up as diesel

It's useful for the plastics and petrochemical industry, but it's not going to make the country energy independent, even including battery costs wind still trounces.

Isn't LNG a byproduct of the fracking process - and natural gas has taken over a good chunk of coal's role in our electricity generation?

Extracting LNG may or may not be via fracking, and may come from conventional or unconvential fields.

The largest LNG gas fields currently producing are not being "fracked", eg:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pars/North_Dome_Gas-Cond...

The US is now the largest exporter of oil in the world.

So John McCann did run on reducing fossil fuel usage and promoting a greater mix of energy technologies but I wouldn't say that changed by 2012 per se. McCain himself was the anomaly that didn't match earlier or later candidates. For example, Bush did open up ANWR to drilling, even though that was purely symbolic and nobody is going up there to drill or has done in the 20 intervening years (apart from some minor exploratory drilling by Chevron).

Also, I'd say McCain's policy was more based on a national security argument than a climate argument. As others have pointed out, fracking changed everything. In 2008 we were a huge net importer of oil. Now we're a huge net exporter.

Mines (including oil wells) are huge wealth concentrators. A handful of very wealthy people benefit hugely from resource extraction. And the US government, as a whole regardless of party, represents the interests of large corporations both domestically and overseas.

Anyway, Bush (either one) didn't run on renewable energy. Neither did the candidates that came after. 2012 was just a reversion to mean.

Obama was elected, which made some people very angry:

> Here’s John Boehner, the likely speaker if Republicans take the House, offering his plans for Obama’s agenda: “We’re going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can.”

> Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell summed up his plan to National Journal: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

Sure Trump took everything to an absurd level of "do the opposite of biden no matter what", but it started back then.

[1] https://www.politico.com/story/2010/10/the-gops-no-compromis...

> The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

I remember that day vividly.

It was the middle of the Great Recession, it was the worst our economy was doing in a long time. Millions were out of work. People were looking to the government to see what the plan was to get the country back on track.

A reporter asks McConnell what the senate’s number one priority was.

The answer? Not fixing the economy, not helping out every day Americans. Not finding the root cause of the crash and making sure it doesn’t happen that way again.

No, the answer was “make sure Obama is a one term president.” That’s all we would expect from the senate for the next 6 years.

The day McConnell said that, I said out loud: “I will never vote Republican again for the rest of my life.” (Prior to that point I mostly voted D but not 100% of the time.)

And I plan to keep that promise until I die.

have democrats not made similar statements about Trump, him being a danger to democracy and such?

Sure. And Republicans, and many world leaders.

Trump is well outside the norms of POTUS's through history.

In 2008-9 Republicans did not even make the pretense of Obama being a threat to democracy. (Which would have been absurd in a way it isn't for Trump, who tried to overthrow an election he lost.)

I remember when some lady called Obama "Muslim" (in the same tone of voice as she'd say "demon" or something) and Mitt Romney took the microphone from her and said "no, no, we disagree politically but he's a good man."

Shows how poorly those politicians understood the constituency they were fomenting. He was boo'd for it by people that had come to see him specifically, and about 15 years later, republican voters built a scaffold outside the Capital they were breaking into while chanting about hanging the Republican vice president.

I feel like American politicians often play with fire without understanding its nature as something that burns.

Sit down.

I recommend John Boehner's book. He complimented Obama often, stated he & his team were far more ready than McCain to work with Bush on the economy. They were smoking buddies.

As far as I can tell they hated Obama not for what he did, said or believed. Those things were quite middle of the road.

They hated him for what he was.

But his tan suit!!

bs. obama fucked up healthcare even more, bombed everyone (even americans) and deported more than trump.

color bait.

He did that before he was elected?

Didn’t help that he showed up at his first couple Senate meetings gloating about winning the election. And tried to set working hours for his former colleagues. Among other things.

Gloating? Oh no! We should impeach him!

The audacity! I’m clutching my pearls.

Obstructionism as a core tenet of the (former) Republican platform is reprehensible, and retrospectively probably led to quite a bit of discontent with the government’s inability to address problems that Americans face. That same discontent fomented the current reactionary swing, so in the end maybe they really got what they wanted. Shameful.

Right on. That's probably the worst part of the debilitating self-own we're currently going through. Even if conservatives (aka Democrats) gain back Congress, then gain back the Presidency, then overcome their controlled opposition dynamic where enough inevitably defect and undermine anything meaningful from getting done, so much has been broken that we will be lucky if they even manage to stop the hemorrhaging. Even if the Republicans that got "dragged into" the fascist fever start to have a bit of self-reflection to realize the damage they've done. We've got what, maybe 8 years until the malcontents' dog whistle refrains start to have credence again and then we're right back to staring down the destructionists - with a trail having already been blazed.

Well, those things sound very quaint compared to what Trump did and does, no matter if you take his first or his second term...

"Other things" most obviously being the racism caused in part by significant cognitive dissonance that uniquely affects white supremacists when having a black president.

History rhymes.

I'd have to be full on, 100% retarded to have voted for Donald Trump.

> All that was gone by 2012. I'm not sure what caused the change.

It was all lies to try and win elections.

You’re not sure?

In a word: Greed. In two words: Crony Capitalism. The spend on “non-renewable“ energy is significant to the domestic economy. In 2023 (most recent year I could find), consumer spend on energy in the US was $1.6T (https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/energy/us-ener...) with at least 82% of that being fossil fuels - the remainder being “renewables” and nuclear energy (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=62444). This does not include billions in subsidies and infrastructure investment.

“Going green” would threaten the American Greed Machine by cutting upwards of $150B in taxes annually, interfering with the individual, corporate, and government gains from the stock and commodities markets, causing short-term inflation due to commodity value spikes, and long-term deflation due to renewable energy being relatively very low cost to generate after the infrastructure is in place. Last, but certainly there is more, the US exports a massive amount of oil and gas. Divesting from fossil fuel production would have a significant impact on GDP (find your own source).

This is why the US doesn’t invest in infrastructure that doesn’t generate significant ongoing income like it once did - it simply doesn’t make enough money. We only act once it is falling apart.

It is all about the money, man. That money is power. It keeps the Corporatocracy and those at the top of it in charge, the US as the primary reserve currency and allows the US to have a huge, formidable military.

That was all true long before 2008 so doesn't explain why the Republican platform changed nearly 180 degrees on this between 2008 and 2012.

Oh, I thought you were being sarcastic. It was clearly Citizens United (2008) and the explosive growth of Super PACs that followed.

Unlimited spending from the fossil fuel industry basically standardized Republican candidates on climate denial talking points. Plus whatever bizarre fetishes random Republican billionaires had, like Adelson keeping Gingrich's primary campaign on life support for months. That fucked up Romney's pivot to the general election for no perceivable gain to any of them. According to Wikipedia Adelson spent over $90 million on losing candidates in 2012!

All of that was through Super PACs.

Well - greed explains this though. Plus, you can also run fake-policies - the USA has done so numerous times before. Flip-Flopping happens in both parties there.

Human greed has existed as long as humans have existed.

"Grr greed" is an easy answer that's popular these days but by itself it can't explain a change as it's a constant factor in us as a species.

Citizens United legalized bribery. Now the politicians could make real money by ignoring the public.

Oh come on, Bush was the first disaster in the fight against climate warming.

His "win" might be one of the most impactful sliding doors in the human history.

Big coal got involved. Undoubtedly one or more billionaires in the dirty energy industry would have seen their substantial wealth dwindle to the mere single-digit billions and started paying politicians a lot of money. There's simply no other explanation because to actively kill clean energy projects that are 90% complete and is not only cleaner than coal but also now cheaper is simply illogical and irrational.

Fracking and access to cheap gas and oil

A black man was elected president.

I don't think anyone's nailing this right

It's manufactured grievance. Opportunists politicize losing positions for political gain because they're inherently anti-elite, anti-establishment and upset experts and the informed.

Upon this antagonization is conflict which brings on drama, eyeballs, and advertisers.

It's an attention flywheel that brings loyalty, builds a moat, and sets a differentiator...

Republicans. Remember them?

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